BBC: Spoon-Bender Uri Geller A CIA Spy?

A BBC documentary claims that Israeli spoon-bending psychic Uri Geller once worked for the CIA.

By Chana Ya'ar

First Publish: 6/17/2013, 5:13 PM

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A BBC documentary claims that Israeli spoon-bending psychic Uri Geller once worked for the CIA.

Geller, counted a friend from personalities as diverse as singer Michael Jackson to author and lecturer Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, was alleged to have been also employed by Israel's international intelligence agency, the Mossad. Some reports have also raised the question of whether he has been "re-activated" since the "9/11" Al Qaeda attack on the United States -- which Geller has quietly ducked answering.

A popular entertainer on the American television circuit in the 1970s and 1980s, Geller wowed audiences by apparently reading minds, bending spoons and otherwise using his paranormal abilities, although many contended that Geller's performances could be replicated with standard magicians' equipment.

He came to the attention of military scientists and strategists in both Israel and the United States, where he was alleged to have served in “missions that were positive,” as Geller put it.

Film-maker Vikram Jayanti interviewed numerous scientists, intelligence agents and insiders in the Pentagon and elsewhere in Washington D.C. to produce “In The Secret Life Of Uri Geller.”

Several confirmed that American officials had employed Geller, who is now age 66. A document on Geller's own website, declassified by President Bill Clinton and released under the Freedom of Information Act, makes it clear that he was approached by the CIA.

But it was ultimately Israel that he served. Biographer Jonathan Margolis related an incident in 1976 in which an Israeli agent asked Geller to memorize a series of numbers on which he was to concentrate at a later time, thinking “Break, break break.”

In fact, Geller was unwittingly participating in the secret rescue operation being carried out at Entebbe Airport, where the psychic was, it was hoped, putting a radar station out of action while commandos flew in under cover of night to rescue 102 Air France passengers being held hostage in Uganda by Palestinian terrorists.

According to the biographer, weapons scientist Eldon Byrd claimed that Geller also helped Israel put a suspected Syrian nuclear reactor out of action by identifying its location for the Mossad while flying over the site in a passenger airline.

Geller told Margolis that he “used to erase floppy disks on Aeroflot flights when KGB agents were flying with diplomatic pouches to the West... I must have been successful, I guess, because the CIA guys kept asking me for more and more,” he added.

But he drew the line at killing, refusing to stop a pig's heart in an experiment, he said.